Part 15 (1/2)

[24] For a study of children's wors.h.i.+p see H.H. Hartshorne, _Wors.h.i.+p in the Sunday School_; ”Report of Commission on Graded Wors.h.i.+p,” _Religious Education_, October, 1914.

[25] ”Parents who give up such a practice as family prayers mainly because they know of many other people who have done the same are just as much the slaves of public opinion and ignorant cant as the narrowest Lowlander who forbids his children secular history on Sunday.”--Lyttleton, _Corner-Stone of Education_, pp. 207-8.

[26] Quoted by W.S. Athearn, _The Church School_.

[27] A number of good poems are given in A.R. Wells, _Grace before Meat_.

[28] W.B. Forbush gives a number of poetic forms of prayer for children in _The Religious Nurture of a Little Child_, pp. 12, 13.

[29] By Samuel Walter Foss.

[30] One handy form is _The Heart of the Bible_, prepared by E.A.

Broadus; another, _The Children's Bible_.

CHAPTER XIII

SUNDAY IN THE HOME

Almost every family finds Sunday a problem. Other days are well occupied with full programs; this one has a program for only part of its time.

Other days are rich with the liberty of happy action, but this one is frequently marked by inaction, repression, and limitations. As soon as the evanescent pleasure of Sunday clothes has pa.s.sed, for those for whom it existed at all, the children settle down to endure the day.

-- 1. THE MEANING OF THE DAY

Fathers and mothers who vent a sigh of relief when Sunday is over must marvel at the strains of ”O day of joy and gladness.” Yet this day defeats its purpose when it is of any other character. We have no right to rob it of its joy and its healing balm. On the day made for man, sacred to his highest good, whatever hinders the real happiness of the child ought to be set aside.

Instead of accepting traditions regarding the method of observing the Sunday, would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, For what use of the day can we properly be held responsible? Here are so many--fifty-two a year--days of special opportunity. To us who complain that business interferes with the personal education of our children through the week, what ought this day to mean? To us who lament the little time we can spend with our families, what ought this day to mean? And what ought we to try to make it mean to children?

We call this G.o.d's day; what must some children think of a G.o.d who robs his day of all pleasure? If this is the kind of day he makes, then how unattractive would be his years and eternity! It is the day when we have our best opportunity to show them what G.o.d is like, to interpret his world and his works in terms of beauty, kindness, riches of thought, and love.

It ought to be the day reserved for the best in life, for the treasures of affection, for the uses of the spirit. Whatever is done this day must come to this test, Is this a ministry to the life of goodness, truth, and loving service? Does this enrich lives? In other words, we may put the broad educational test to the day and its program and determine all by ministry to growing lives.

-- 2. CONSERVING THE VALUES

The family faces the problem of the opposition between the rights of man on this day and the greed of commerce, the fight between a day of rest and a day of work. Man's right to rest is a.s.sured, legally, but commerce in the name of amus.e.m.e.nt and in the guise of petty and unnecessary trading constantly maintains its fight to invade the day of rest, to turn it from ministry to man as a person to the dull level of the week of ministry to things. The home has much at stake in this struggle. It needs one day free from the life that tears its members apart, free from the toil that engrosses thought, free for its members to live together as spiritual beings.

In the need for one day, free from the things that hinder and devoted to the life of the spirit, the home finds the guiding principle for the use of the day; all members are to be trained to use it as a glorious opportunity, a welcome period, a day of the best things of life. It is devoted to personality, to man's rights as a religious being.

Surely one of the best things of life will be that we shall meet one another, shall look into faces of friends and companions! And this opportunity of social mingling is lifted to a high level when it is an act of the larger family life, the life that brings G.o.d and man into one family. That is what the church meeting and service ought to be: our Father's larger family getting together on the day of the life that makes them one. For the child the church school and the children's service of wors.h.i.+p are their immediate points of vital touch with the church family. If we think of the day as affording us the pleasure of social mingling with friends and members of that family, Sunday morning will cease to be a period of unwilling observance of empty duties. Of course that will depend, too, on the measure in which the church and school grasp their opportunity to make this the best of days.[31]

Further, let the home keep this day as the one of personal values all the way through, sacred to that life of love, friends.h.i.+p, and joy in the presence of one another which is the essential life of the family. It has always been a good custom for friends to visit on this day, for families grown up and established around their own hearths to gather again for a few hours. It is the day when we have time to discover how much greater are the riches of friends.h.i.+p than aught besides, when, looking into the eyes of those we love, we see ”the light that never was on sea or land,” the ultimate good!

The hours of being together are the hours of real education. Children cannot be with good and great people and remain the same. Their lives need other lives. Above all, they need us. This should be the day for real mothering and fathering. Nothing ought to be permitted to interfere with this, neither our social pleasures nor the demands of the church.

-- 3. THE PROBLEM OF PLAY

What shall we do with the child who wants to play on Sunday? Is there any other kind of child? They all want to. It is as natural for a child to play as it is for a man to rest; it is as necessary. A child is a growing person learning life by play. Because play seems trivial to us we a.s.sume it is so to them; we would banish the trivial from the day devoted to the higher life. In some families play is forbidden because children find pleasure in it, and adults find it impossible to a.s.sociate piety and pleasure.